We Speak Music
Max Nemo’s ‘Nexus’ Showcases Vulnerability That Meets Grandeur
From the opening chords of Fool, Max Nemo asserts her presence as a producer unafraid of vulnerability. The track’s quiet intensity establishes a framework for Nexus, a record where orchestral splendor and intimate lyricism coexist in perfect harmony.
Nyad carries the listener through currents of endurance and self-belief. Nemo’s production creates a space that’s simultaneously expansive and personal, echoing Bon Iver’s emotive resonance while asserting a distinct sonic identity.
Latter Love is a highlight, a tender yet intricate exploration of relational complexity. The song balances subtle harmonic layering with emotional immediacy, drawing listeners into its reflective orbit. Nemo’s voice is the tether, grounding the cinematic arrangement in lived experience.
With Sisyphus Madness, Nemo explores the tension between struggle and commitment. Its orchestral movements and rhythmic precision mirror the uphill labor of shared love, producing a track that feels both monumental and deeply human.
Instrumental interludes like La La Land and 2,22 allow the album to breathe, demonstrating Nemo’s mastery of space, texture, and mood. These moments are reminders that silence and sound are equally potent tools in shaping emotion.
Closing with the three-part suite O, Nexus achieves a sublime synthesis of narrative and sonic ambition. Nemo’s debut is more than a collection of songs; it’s a cinematic journey, an intimate meditation, and a bold introduction to an artist whose voice deserves to echo far beyond this first chapter.
“Max Nemo’s Nexus is a rare debut that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant,” says music publicist Danielle Holian, Decent Music PR. “Her ability to translate moments of vulnerability, transformation, and quiet introspection into expansive, cinematic soundscapes sets her apart in the contemporary music landscape. This is an album that doesn’t just invite you to listen, it invites you to inhabit a world, feel its textures, and discover pieces of yourself within it.”
Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.
‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.
The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.
The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:
Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.”
About the track, Michele says, “I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.
We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.”
The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.
Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.
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